ABOUT US
Advisory Board
Teresa Stanton Collett, is a Professor of Law and Director of the Prolife Center at the University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis, MN. Professor Collett is a leading prolife and pro-family lawyer and law professor. Since 2003 she has been Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, MN where she teaches bioethics, constitutional litigation, and property. She has directed the university’s Prolife Center since its inception in 2009.
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A nationally prominent speaker and scholar, she is active in attempts to rebuild the Culture of Life. Professor Collett has served as special attorney general for the states of Oklahoma and Kansas, as well as assisting other state attorneys general in defending prolife laws. A member of the bar of the United States Supreme Court, she has represented the governors of Minnesota and North Dakota as amici curiae, as well as the Illinois State Medical Society in defending partial-birth abortion bans. She was counsel of record for 240 women scholars and professionals in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, an amicus brief Justice Alito referenced in the Dobbs majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.
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She has testified before committees of the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittees on the Constitution, as well as numerous legislative committees in the states.
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Because of her work for prolife causes, Pope Benedict appointed her to a five-year term as a consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family in 2009, where she was reappointed by Pope Francis to serve from 2014 to 2016 until the Council was dissolved. She currently serves on the Academic Advisory Committee to the Catholic Bar Association.
Richard M. Doerflinger retired in 2016 from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, where he served as Associate Director of the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities. For 36 years he prepared testimony and other materials on abortion, euthanasia, and other issues. His writings have appeared in Hastings Center Report, Duquesne Law Review, Issues in Law & Medicine, The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, and other journals, and in many Catholic magazines and newspapers. He is a Fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, an Associate Scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, and an Adjunct Fellow in Bioethics and Public Policy at the National Catholic Bioethics Center. He holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Chicago, and conducted doctoral studies in Theology there and at the Catholic University of America. He and his wife live in La Conner, Washington.
Amy Gehrke. Amy's journey in the pro-life movement began during her high school years as a volunteer for Westark Right to Life in Northwest Arkansas. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma, Amy dedicated nearly 11 years to National Right to Life in Washington, D.C., initially as a Communications Assistant and later as the Marketing Coordinator. Following her tenure there, she transitioned to serve as a legislative aide for the Wisconsin State Senate until her family relocated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2007. In 2015, Amy assumed the role of Vice President of Advancement and Development at Wisconsin Right to Life before taking on the position of executive director at Illinois Right to Life in Chicago in 2020. Amy joined the Center for Client Safety in November of 2023 to help strengthen their partnerships and garner support for their crucial mission of investigating, reporting, and shutting down abortion businesses.
R. Mary Hayden Lemmons, Ph.D., is president of University Faculty for Life, an academic fellowship focused on threats to human life in its beginning and end. She is also an associate professor of philosophy of the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. She currently serves as an assistant editor of the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, and an Advisory Board member for the Family Studies program at the University of St. Thomas, MN.
She earned her doctorate in philosophy from the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas; her M.A. in philosophy from Niagara University in New York; and her B.S./B.A in biochemistry/political science from the State University of New York at Binghamton. Dr. Lemmons is also a summer adjunct at the St. John Paul II Institute in Houston. Dr. Lemmons’s research and publications focus on bioethics, political and legal philosophy, Aquinas’s personalist natural law, the feminism of John Paul II, and the philosophy of love. She authored Ultimate Normative Foundations: The Case for Aquinas’s Personalist Natural Law, edited and contributed three chapters to Woman as Prophet in the Home and the World, served as a special volume editor for Studia Gilsoniana, and founded the Society for Thomistic Personalism.
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Jennifer Popik, J.D., serves as the Director of Government Affairs at National Right to Life. In this role, she leads the organization's efforts to advance public policy goals in Congress and the federal executive branch. Jennifer also directs the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics, focusing on issues related to euthanasia, such as assisted suicide, the denial of lifesaving medical treatment, food, and fluids, and healthcare rationing.
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Jennifer has testified before numerous state legislatures on various pro-life issues and frequently appears on radio and national media outlets, including CNN, NBC, and Fox. Before joining National Right to Life in 2007, she worked with the Cleveland Bar Association's Pro Bono Program and the Cleveland prosecutor's office. She holds a bachelor's degree from John Carroll University and a law degree from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. Jennifer is also a mother of four.